''Motherly'' is a 2021 Canadian
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
horror
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Arts, entertainment, and media
Genres
*Horror fiction, a genre of fiction
** Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction
**Korean horror, Korean horror fiction
* Horror film, a film genre
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thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
directed by
Craig David Wallace.
The film stars Lora Burke as Kate, a woman who lives an isolated cabin with her daughter Beth (Tessa Kozma) after her husband is sent to prison for the death of a young girl; one day, however, the dead girl's parents (Kristen MacCulloch and Nick Smyth) show up demanding answers because they believe Kate was the real killer.
The film premiered on August 26, 2021 at the
London FrightFest Film Festival, and was screened at several other Canadian and international film festivals before being released on
VOD on November 16, 2021.
Spencer Creaghan
Spencer Creaghan is a Canadian musician and composer. He is most noted for his work on the 2021 film '' Motherly'', for which he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Score at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
His o ...
received a
Canadian Screen Award
The Canadian Screen Awards (french: link=no, Les prix Écrans canadiens) are awards given for artistic and technical merit in the film industry recognizing excellence in Canadian film, English-language television, and digital media (web series) p ...
nomination for
Best Original Score at the
10th Canadian Screen Awards
The 10th Canadian Screen Awards were held on April 10, 2022, to honour achievements in Canadian film, television and digital media production in 2021.Etan Vlessing"Maitreyi Ramakrishnan to Receive Canadian Screen Awards Special Honor" ''The Hollyw ...
in 2022.
Plot
Mother Kate lives in seclusion with her 9 year old daughter, Beth. A police officer, Hal, periodically checks in on both. Beth hopes for her father, Brad, to come for her ninth birthday.
Brad has committed suicide in prison after he is sentenced there for the murder of Beth's friend Courtenay two years prior. One evening two people, husband and wife Lewis and Mary break in. They are the parents of Courtenay, and they believe the evidence pointing to Brad makes no sense and it's revealed Brad and Mary had an affair. Hal checks in and sees Lewis about to kill Kate, who is confessing to implicating Brad, and shoots him and Kate kills Hal for learning the truth.
Mary incapacitates Kate and takes Beth but Kate then escapes and wounds Mary. Mary is killed by Beth with a pitchfork. Beth is ultimately revealed as a psychopath and Courtenay's actual killer, with Kate setting Brad up to protect her daughter. Beth stabs her mother to death, says she's avenging her father's death then leaves.
As credits roll, a stranger sees Beth walking and asks if she needs help upon seeing her bloody outfit while Beth grins slightly.
Cast and characters
* Lora Burke as Kate
* Tessa Kozma as Beth
* Kristen MacCulloch as Mary
* Nick Smyth as Lewis
* Colin Paradine as Hal
Release
''Motherly'' had its world premiere at the
London FrightFest Film Festival on August 26, 2021,
and was released on
VOD by Entertainment Squad Video on November 16, 2021.
Reception
Box office
''Motherly'' grossed $0 in North America
Critical response
The review aggregator
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website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
reported a 86% approval rating, with an average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 6.6/10, based on 7 reviews.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Motherly (2021 film)
2021 films
2021 horror thriller films
2020s English-language films
2020s Canadian films
Canadian psychological thriller films
English-language Canadian films
Films about home invasion